Moriendo
by Riniel Haerion
Summary: Anders had been long dead. That had just been the final step. Inspired by the short animated film "Moriendo"


It felt like the entire world was silent as he stood on the pier in the light of the moon. He was in a world of his own as he stared out into the ocean with a blank look on his face. All of the emotions, all the tiredness, all the bullshit that he went through was slipping away quietly into the waves as he stood there staring into the water. He simply didn't feel anything. Almost a numb sensation, but it was good. It was nice. It meant it was almost time.

Something crowed near him, and he moved his gaze down to his feet, where a crow was pecking at his feet insistently. Anders did nothing to stop it, but he suddenly became somewhat aware of his surroundings. He wasn't alone on the pier, no, there were many others. A majority being the elderly, standing serenely out into the sea with their own crows surrounding their bodies. But there were others too, young men and women. Children. There was a young mother holding a child who was squalling yet it created no sound.

They were waiting for their end. Just as Anders was. He wasn't alive, no. He hadn't been for awhile to be honest. This would just be the final nail in the coffin. You aren't really alive when your own soul has been dead for years. His own soul left when Helen's spirit departed from her own body that many years ago. His brothers all hated him, and never wanted to see him again. They had just been starting to get along too, but all of that was broken apart when Anders was suddenly to blame for everything that had happened.

And slowly all his joyous life started to drain from his body, until he couldn't even enjoy the things he truly loved. He seldom used his powers anymore, in fact the last time he did was merely to convince Dawn to take over the company and to care for it on her own. That was the last time he saw any of them. He used the last of his money to feed himself the bare minimum and for him to constantly be completely wasted. Though by the end of it he didn't even feel that way. It was just numbness. Utter numbness as he waited to depart from this world into the next.

And so now he stands on the silent pier with the rest of these bodies waiting to be carried over to where ever it was they were going. He never said a proper goodbye to anyone, but he doubted they even cared at this point, because they never bothered contacting him beforehand. Perhaps Axl has already found his Frigg and they are all happy with their own god-powers and families and everything they could ever want.

Yet Anders was there, waiting. Waiting for something to happen on the pier so it could all finally be over and he can finally be at peace with the world instead of being an empty parasite taking up space in his own family that probably would have been picture-perfect if he simply did not exist.

The baby wasn't crying anymore. And for a moment it felt like the silence all swelled together as the crows suddenly all started squawking at the same time and suddenly took flight. Anders felt a hand on his shoulder and he slowly turned to see a face that he hadn't seen in a long while.

"I didn't think you'd end up coming so soon. Or like this. I would have expected you to be completely wasted and wondering where the party was." It was Eva. At least he thought it was Eva.

Everyone seemed to reacting differently to invisible beings standing in front of them as people were slowly being lead into the fog at the end of the pier that Anders hadn't even paid notice to. Yet there was something beckoning him towards that fog and it was the most emotion that he had felt in so long he wasn't even sure he could speak to Eva as she stood there in front of him with an oddly calm face and none of the pure bitchiness that she had while she was alive. Yet he wasn't even sure if this was actually Eva, or Hel, or simply a figment created to carry him over to the other side.

"Come on Bragi. Are you leaving or not? Or do you want to be numb for even longer until your brothers finally find you dead in your kitchen just like Helen." She held out her hand.

At this point Anders had no idea what was going to happen, but he felt a bubbling in his stomach and a warmth on his skin as he started to glow a faint pink as they stood there on the pier. He simply stared at her hand for a few moments and every memory that he had of his brothers were all surging into his mind. Good and bad. He was going to leave all of it and be free from all the bullshit for once, and he realized that he was okay with it. He could leave Bragi to someone who was much more capable of using it for good.

He took her hand, and they both slowly walked to the fog, and the god spirit slowly exited his body and washed away into the water as he entered the deep murky fog and disappeared from his brothers lives once and for all.

And there was something that he had miscalculated. They remembered him, and they remembered very well. They had been looking for him with no luck whatsoever, until they got word that someone had found his body after it had drifted ashore again from the ocean. They missed him terribly, and realized that they didn't deal with this the way they could have, but they weren't sure if they would have been able to help.

Anders had been long dead. That had just been the final step.


End file.
